CHRISTMAS dinner will come to Simon Gittany this year in an aluminium tray served up in his four by three metre cell in a wing of the grim Metropolitan Remand & Reception Centre in Sydney's western suburbs.

It will be a bleak and lonely day for the convicted murderer.

Out in the yards of Australia's largest remand prison, the festive season may get "lively" with prisoners emotional about missing their families and possibly drunk on a concoction on "jail brew".

But Gittany will be in lockdown, inside the quieter confines of the protection wing where he will spend his first Christmas behind bars since a judge found him guilty of throwing his girlfriend Lisa Harnum off a city balcony.

What Simon Gittany is allowed to have in his prison cell. Picture: News Limited.Source:News Limited

Gittany will get a foil tray containing slices of chicken, potatoes, mixed vegetables and cranberry sauce.

Prepared three days earlier by fellow criminals in one of Corrective Services four vast prison kitchens in Sydney and regional NSW, the meal will be reheated, placed on a trolley and given to Gittany to take to his cell.

The serving will be a precisely balanced and measured combination of nutrients without harmful fat or salt which is, according to some convicted criminals, almost entirely tasteless.

Murderer Simon Gittany will soon have to learn how to survive in the yard of one of Australia's heaviest prisons...Source:News Limited

Dinner time: a prison inmate stirs a vat in preparation of meals like the Xmas dinner more than 9,000 criminals will eat behi...Source:News Limited

For dessert, Gittany will get a fruit mince tart and a pear.

Apart from the other inmates on protection and the few prison officers unlucky enough to be rostered on duty, Gittany will spend his first Christmas in jail utterly alone.

His sole gift will be from the Salvation Army, a small parcel containing a pair of socks, note pad, stamped envelopes and a bag of lollies.

Dressed in prison greens, he will spend most of the day with only a television and a Bible or Koran for company.

No visits are allowed this Christmas Day, a rule enforced throughout the NSW prison system since 2008.

His family and girlfriend Rachelle Louise may visit him on Christmas Eve or Boxing Day.

Rachelle Louise, Simon Gittany's girlfriend, won't be seeing him on Xmas day and may have to travel as far away ...Source:News Limited

If Gittany wanted to indulge in a glass of Christmas cheer, his only chance would be from inmates who had secretly cooked up a batch of jail brew.

Leading up to Christmas, inmates often hoard their daily fruit ration and sugar sachets, which they mix with water in a rubbish bin or plastic bag and ferment an alcoholic drink.

The mixture often tastes vile, like rotting fruit, but can pack a punch.

Shiv city: these jail made weapons, some fashioned from toilet or toothbrushes are commonly uncovered in searches of Silverwa...Source:News Limited

Any visitors attempting to smuggle in these items face being banned from entering a correctional facility.

Down the driveway from Gittany's cell is Silverwater Women's Correctional Centre, where baby killer Keli Lane is facing a tough time of her own.

Last week, Lane reportedly "had trouble actually breathing" in the video room of the jail where she sat as three judges on the Court of Criminal Appeal rejected the one-time elite polo players bid to have her conviction for killing her own child overturned.